Gargantis

by Thomas Taylor

  “Couldn’t you do that, Your Ladyship?” Mr Mollusc bows with an ingratiating smile. “I’m sure you could.”

  “No, I don’t have time for all this.” The lady waves the suggestion away. “Besides, I already have someone to handle such matters for me.”

  “You do?” says Dr Thalassi.

  “Naturally,” says Lady Kraken. “And he’s been here all along, listening in on everything from his hiding place over there. Isn’t that right, Herbert Lemon?”

  And I freeze where I am, peering over the desk of my Lost-and-Foundery, as everyone in the lobby turns to look at me.

  THE DUNDERBRAIN

  SLOWLY, I STAND UP.

  “Er, hello,” I manage to say.

  “Herbert Lemon!” snaps Mr Mollusc, clearly relieved to be back on safe ground shouting at me. “You will address Her Ladyship in the correct manner. Get out here, boy, and stop fiddling with your cap.”

  I look down at Violet, who is still crouching below my desk. She gives me a nod of encouragement. So I tug the front of my uniform straight, flip open the hinged part of the desk, and step out into the lobby as if everything’s fine and I’m not at all being stared at by dozens of angry people.

  “But,” says Dr Thalassi, who is the first to recover from the surprise, “this bottle is ancient, Lady Kraken. Its origins are lost in the mists of time. How can Herbie return such an artefact to its rightful owner? How can there even be a rightful owner, after all this time?”

  “That is precisely why I should have it,” says Mrs Fossil. “Whatever happened to ‘Finders, keepers’?”

  The fishermen begin to grumble.

  “Enough!” Lady Kraken cries. “I have every faith in my Lost-and-Founder to discover the best solution to this problem. He is, after all, an expert. Come, Mr Lemon, come closer.” And she beckons me with a claw-like hand.

  I approach my employer and stand beside her wheelchair. She motions for me to lean in, her wrinkled head bobbing towards mine.

  “Juicy conundrum, this, isn’t it?” she says in a low voice only I can catch. “Think you’re up to it?”

  “Um…” I begin to say.

  “Of course you are!” she cries, slapping me on the back. It feels like being hit with a sock full of dry twigs. “You don’t want to be a dunderbrain all your life, do you, boy?”

  “Well…” I venture, but the old lady silences me with a crooked finger.

  “Just remember our deal,” she whispers.

  “Deal?”

  “Yes, the deal! You said you would be my eyes and ears in the hotel, remember? You said you’d report any funny business to me. Well, something tells me funny business is afoot right now. I feel it, boy – feel it in my waters.”

  “Your waters?” I squeak, trying not to visualize this. “Right. Got it, Your Ladyness.”

  “Good lad!” Lady Kraken cackles. Then she speaks up so everyone can hear. “That’s all sorted, then. And now, I will retire to my bedchamber. I haven’t yet brushed my backside.”

  “Your … your backside?”

  “Yes,” says the lady, swishing the toothbrush in the silver bowl before placing it in her mouth, “the backshide of my toosh. Goodnight!”

  And with this she whirrs away to the elevator and trundles inside, the doors sliding shut behind her.

  Everyone turns back to look at me.

  I try a grin. Well, what else can I do?

  There is a rule of lost-and-foundering – number eighteen, if you’re wondering – that says: When in doubt, brazen it out. I’ve often wondered what it means, but as I stand there blinking under the frosty gaze of all the people in the lobby, I suddenly think I know exactly what that rule is all about. It means I can’t stand here blinking any longer. It means I’ve got to do something, and fast.

  “I need one of those,” I say to a member of the hotel staff who is standing near by with a stack of freshly folded towels. “It’s for important Lost-and-Founder business.”

  I drape a towel over the fish-shaped bottle, tuck it all around, and lift the whole thing into my arms before anyone can act or speak.

  It’s as I’m marching back to my cubbyhole, my arms full of bottle, that I happen to glance up the main lobby staircase and see something I wish I hadn’t: Deep Hood, picked out in sudden lightning, watching us all.

  I hurry down to my cellar as the thunder roars behind me.

  “You were amazing!” says Violet.

  We’re at the foot of the stairs to my cellar, and I’m still clutching the ancient fish bottle wrapped in the white towel. Well, it was a white towel. Now it’s already quite green and seawatery from the object inside. Up above, voices are raised in protest as Mr Mollusc clears the lobby and sends everyone home.

  “I don’t feel very amazing,” I say, staggering into the cellar. “Help me get this thing safely down on the floor.”

  Between us we manage to lay the bottle out, bunching the towel around it like a nest. In the warm light of my Lost-and-Foundery, the bottle glows aqua-green and strange. I tap it gently with my foot. Immediately, it gives a little tremble, and the flickering light flashes inside.

  “What’s doing that?” says Vi, her face lit up with fascination and wonder. “It’s almost as if there’s something living inside it. But there can’t be, can there?”

  I shrug.

  “It looks firmly stoppered to me,” I say, peering at the bung in the end. “I don’t think anything could get either in or out of that.”

  “What about the ‘funny writing’ as Mrs Fossil called it?” says Violet. “This must be it here.”

  And she points to a line of embossed symbols that run along one side of the bottle:

  And then, on the other side:

  “Look, there’s more of it around the rim.”

  “Mrs F’s not wrong,” I reply. “It is funny. I wonder what it means.”

  Now it’s Violet’s turn to shrug.

  “Looks like some kind of ancient runes,” she says.

  Erwin, who has been watching all this from behind my big armchair, cautiously approaches the bottle. He reaches out a hesitant paw and touches the glass. The bottle shakes and gives another flicker.

  “Of course,” says Vi, looking at me with a twinkle in her eye. “You know what I’m going to say now.”

  I quickly run through all the daring, crazy, unlikely and infuriating things Violet Parma could say right now, but I find it impossible to decide which one she’s referring to.

  “I’m going to say –” Vi grins – “that the only way to find out what’s inside this bottle is to open it.”

  CALAMITOUS WEATHER

  “RIGHT,” I SAY, grabbing the tip of my index finger to begin counting the reasons why we are NOT going to open this bottle. “Firstly, it’s not ours to open. Secondly, we don’t know if it’s dangerous…”

  “OK, OK.” Violet sighs. “I get it. Still, I think deep down you know I’m right.”

  “Like you were right to wind up that shell thing?”

  “But I think I was right to do that,” says Vi. “We found out a lot about the clockwork shell by winding it up – and anyway, no harm was done.”

  Erwin clears his throat.

  “Well, all right, some harm was done.” Vi gives the cat a ruffle on the head. “But if we’re not going to open the bottle, what are we going to do? And how on earth are you supposed to decide who gets to keep it?”

  I say nothing. After all, Dr Thalassi is right – how can there ever be a rightful owner of something that looks as though it’s been in the sea for centuries. I’m more used to signing things this old out of my Lost-and-Foundery – unclaimed, after a hundred years – than signing them in. I already think I should probably just give the bottle back to Mrs Fossil, on the quiet. And yet, it does look very old and historical…

  “I’m going to do what I always do when a lost thing comes in,” I say. “Look for clues. And I’d say the funny writing on the side of the bottle is the best clue we have.”

 
; “The Eerie Script,” says Violet. “And what did the fishermen call it? A dreary business?”

  “A Dismal business,” I reply. “They mean it’s got something to do with Saint Dismal.”

  But I can see from Violet’s face that she needs more of an answer than that.

  “Saint Dismal,” I continue, “was the most famous fisherman of Eerie-on-Sea. At least, according to legend. He is said to have saved the town from disaster, so the fishermen think he’s a hero. And he, er, he had a very long beard.”

  “Is that all you know about him?” says Vi. “How did he save the town, Herbie? What was the disaster? And what about the secret writing?”

  I shrug. But then a light bulb goes on over my head.

  “Wait, I probably can tell you more.”

  I go to my lost-books bookcase and start pulling out cardboard boxes. Eventually I find the right one and tip it out on the rug.

  “What are all those?” says Vi.

  “Guidebooks,” I explain. “For Eerie-on-Sea. The summer tourists buy them but lose them all the time. I hardly ever get to return one, but I’m supposed to look after them, just the same.”

  I pick up a pamphlet with lots of pictures, and flick through it.

  “Here,” I say, handing it to Violet. “This is Saint Dismal.”

  On the page is a photo of the church in Eerie. It shows the statue of a wild-eyed old man dressed like a monk, holding a tall, crooked stick with a fish dangling on the end. He has an expression like thunder on his face, and a very long, scraggy beard that reaches to his feet.

  “Dismal,” Violet reads from the caption. “Patron Saint of Calamitous Weather, and First Fisherman of Eerie-on-Sea.” She taps the photo. “What’s that sun thing over his head?”

  Over the saint, where you’d normally expect a halo, the medieval sculptor carved a fiery star, which shoots zigzaggy rays down onto the holy man’s bald patch.

  “He always has that light over him, in all the pictures.” I shrug. “It has a special name, too, the light, but I can’t remember it.”

  “Once upon a time, a thousand years ago,” Violet reads from the booklet, “a fisher boy named Dismal sailed too close to Maw Rocks and was lost at sea. But his life was spared, and he returned days later with a strange and holy light over his head and the greatest catch of fish anyone had ever seen. The people called it a miracle and prepared a great feast of thanksgiving.

  “But soon there blew up from the ocean a storm so mighty that it threatened to destroy the town. The sky filled with fury, the ground shook and the people wept that Eerie Rock itself was falling into the sea. They named this storm ‘Gargantis’ and called it their doom. Only the boy Dismal resisted despair. Seeing that his home was threatened, he sailed fearlessly into the storm in his little coracle…”

  “His little what-acle?” I jump in.

  “His coracle,” Violet repeats. “I think it’s a type of boat. Anyway … he sailed fearlessly into the storm … and using the strange and holy light, he lured Gargantis away and saved Eerie-on-Sea.”

  “Lured it?” I say, scratching under my cap. “How do you lure a storm?”

  “You can’t,” says Violet. “It’s just a story. Besides, look at this…”

  And she holds up the pamphlet to show what’s on the next page. It’s a very old drawing, of a kind Dr Thalassi calls a woodcut. And the woodcut shows something mind-boggling.

  A vast creature – with the head of an anglerfish and dozens of fins along its sinewy body – is “swimming” in the sky over Eerie-on-Sea. It has two huge flippers, a low-slung mouth filled with tusks, and gigantic ichthyosaur eyes. The creature is wreathed in storm clouds and lightning that seem to pour off its fins. It uses its giant flippers to smash the town to pieces, while lots of little medieval people run away screaming.

  “Yikes!” I say.

  “Early depictions of Gargantis often portrayed it as an actual monster,” says Violet, reading the caption under the drawing, “to symbolize the monstrous nature of the storm. Herbie, imagine a storm so powerful that it has its own name!”

  There’s another KA-BLAM of thunder and a fall of brick dust from my cellar roof. The Lost-and-Foundery quivers as if the very foundations of the hotel are shifting.

  “We don’t have to imagine it!” is all I can say.

  “After saving the town, Saint Dismal lived out the rest of his long days on a rocky island in Eerie Bay,” Violet reads the last bit from the booklet, “protecting the town, and warning sailors and fishermen to keep away from Maw Rocks. He was famous for his bountiful catches and is considered the First Fisherman of Eerie-on-Sea. He is always depicted with the miraculous light over his head, known as the Gargantic Light.”

  “That’s it!” I cry. “I knew it had a special name! The Gargantic Light.”

  There’s another boom of thunder outside, making my iron wood burner rattle.

  “Gargantis wakes, Eerie quakes…” Violet says, repeating the old saying from Seegol’s Diner as she closes the pamphlet. “And all falls into the sea!”

  “Not the hotel,” I reply firmly. “The Grand Nautilus Hotel is built like a castle. My cellar must be the strongest place in the whole town.”

  But even I can hear the doubt in my voice as I say this.

  “Anyway –” Vi throws the booklet back in the box – “it’s a strange legend, but there’s nothing here about any secret writing. There is another clue we could try, though. That red-headed boy, Blaze Westerley. Do you know anything about him?”

  “I’ve seen him around. He and his uncle are fishermen. They have a boat down in the harbour.”

  “Have you ever been on it?”

  I blink at her.

  “On what? Their boat? Of course I haven’t!”

  “You don’t need to sound so surprised, Herbie. It’s a seaside town, I just thought maybe…”

  “Well, you thought wrong, then. These fishermen are hard, serious men. They don’t take passengers. Besides, I never go on boat trips, Vi. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  But I don’t want to answer that.

  Violet knows how I came to Eerie – washed up on the beach, barely conscious, in a crate of lemons. Even if I can’t remember anything before that, it doesn’t take a genius to guess I was in some sort of disaster at sea. So these feet are staying firmly on land from now on, thank you very much, and Violet should be able to figure this out for herself. But when I glance up, I see from Violet’s face that she probably already has.

  “Why won’t you tell me what book the mermonkey chose for you, Herbie?” she asks. “When you first came to Eerie-on-Sea? You know which one it chose for me.”

  And that’s true enough. I was right there when Violet was dispensed the book that led her to unravel part of the mystery of her parents’ disappearance. And while she didn’t exactly find them, she was at least left with the belief they are still out there somewhere, looking for her. It gives her hope that she will be reunited with them some day. But if Violet knew what book the mermonkey chose for me, she’d see right away that I have no such hope.

  “I’ll never tell you,” I say, like I mean it, which I do. And I fold my arms for good measure. “No one in the world knows the title of my book, Violet, and that’s the way it’ll stay.”

  “Prr-up?” says a feline voice, and Erwin jumps into my lap. He stands there, his nose pressed up against mine, his tail waving with irritation.

  And I suddenly remember that someone else does know the title of my book after all. Someone who is good at noticing things, without being noticed himself. And that someone also knows where I hid it.

  “You wouldn’t…!” I say to the cat.

  But Erwin has already jumped off my lap and is walking purposefully towards my bookcase.

  THE COLD, DARK BOTTOM OF THE SEA

  MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE I’m so good at caring for other people’s stuff that I’m so bad at concealing my own. But honestly, you’d think I’d be on safe ground hiding
a book I don’t want anyone to know about on a bookcase crammed with lost books. After all, why would anyone know one of those books was special to me if they weren’t told? Which is why it’s so annoying that despite my best flying tackle, I can’t reach Erwin before he gets to the bottom-most shelf on my bookcase and claws a slim black volume out from the rest.

  Of course, Violet’s there in a moment, grabbing the book and holding it up in triumph.

  “Pesky cat!” I get to my feet and chase the little beast a bit. I don’t really want to catch him, but I do want him to know how cross I am. He jumps up onto the window ledge and hisses down at me.

  I turn back to Violet.

  “That’s not fair!”

  But Violet doesn’t reply. She stares at the book in her hands and slumps back into my armchair. On her face is a look of horror.

  I give a sigh and I plonk myself beside her. Now we’re both looking at the cracked white title letters of the novel the mermonkey chose for me when I first came to Eerie:

  Above the title is a white line across the cover that represents the surface of the water. On this line floats an iceberg, and beside it is the silhouette of a glittering luxury ocean liner, tipped back dramatically and sinking. Then, below the line and all around the title, tiny figures of men and women and children writhe and twist as they sink down, down, down to the depths. Across the lower edge of the black leather cover wave the white tentacles, feelers and claws of the abyssal horrors that lurk at the cold, dark bottom of the sea.

  You don’t need to read this book to know what it’s about.

  But I can already guess that the disturbing artwork isn’t the only thing that’s making Violet stare. Just below the title is the name of the author:

  Of course, you’ve probably heard of Sebastian Eels. He is – or rather, he was – the most famous author who has ever lived in Eerie-on-Sea. He also turned out to be a grade A villain, who met his end in our last big adventure. And a monstrous end it was, too. He was the mortal enemy of Violet’s father – and the main reason she has been left without parents at all. He can’t hurt her now, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t cast a long shadow over her life.